Rebirth
by tuxedotservo
Summary: Asuka at the end of *End of Evangelion*. Constructive comments always welcome.


Rebirth   
---------   
The first thing that she felt was the pain. It seemed to encompass her totally. She hurt   
terribly. It was as if her very being had been pierced. Intense at first, it slowly subsided   
into specific aches. Her right arm hurt along its entire length. Her head ached all around   
the skull, and her left eye pulsed terribly, as if a dagger had been plunged into the socket   
and twisted cruelly. 

Her sense of hearing came to her first. At first, all she could hear was her own   
breathing. Small, steady breaths that made her chest hurt, ever so slightly. As a little   
time passed, she could hear the sound of water, as if waves were lapping on the shore of a   
beach somewhere nearby. 

A thought entered her head. "_I live_." But how could that be? Memories came back to   
her...living nightmares, really. She recalled her final moments, as she was first   
immobilized and then cut to pieces, alive. She hadn't passed out, but stayed conscious   
for the entire experience, as flesh was peeled away, bones crushed, blood spilt. She had   
stayed conscious, screaming first in full vocal and then in silence until her body could no   
longer sustain her. Everything had gone black, silent. 

"_I live_." Slowly, her right eye started to acknowledge light. Initially, all she could make   
out was the fuzzy orb of a full moon hanging in the sky, and a red arch. The sky offered   
no other points of reference, no comfort. It was the moon, a streak of red, and   
emptiness...nothing more. No vision came to her left eye...the only sign of presence for   
it being the constant, never ceasing throb. 

"_I live_." Slowly, a figure became evident in the recesses of her existence, just on the   
edge of her visual field. At first, she couldn't determine who it was. She wanted to shift   
her eyes, or just turn her head, but the shock of it all wouldn't allow her those simple   
movements. The shock of death and life had paralyzed her whole body. All she could do   
was sense the figure, hear its breaths. She could sense that the figure had shifted, and   
was looking at her, but still she could not determine who it was, her eyes transfixed on   
the sky, everything but yet nothing. 

The figure shifted over her. "_It's him_!" Almost as the thought reached her   
consciousness, the boy reached down, wrapping his hands around her throat. "_Do it_!" she   
tried to beg, but could only think. "_I deserve it_!" The boy squeezed, his arms straining to   
prevent the breath from reaching her lungs, intent to plunge her back into the darkness   
from which she had just emerged. 

"_We've hurt each other_," she thought, her eyes focusing on the devastated face of the   
young boy, but unable to look straight at him. "_I've hurt him, and he's hurt me. Why do   
people hurt each other so_?" She thought about her relationship with him, and with   
everyone. She had not allowed herself to rely on others for anything, after her Mother.   
She had set her mind to be totally self-reliant. And now, at the end, the truth of it became   
her reality: She had been a fool. 

Her fingers twitched, ever so slightly, as control started to return to her right arm. "_No   
person can be an island_," she thought. "_It took being put in a coma to realize that_." Her   
hand shifted, and started to rise. "_It took fighting until my very death to realize that_..."   
Her hand glided, slowly, upwards. After what seemed like tormented eternity and never   
ending ache, her hand found its mark.

She touched his face.

He looked down, shocked. He kept his hands on her throat, but stopped squeezing.   
Murder was not in his heart; perhaps it never was, but he was reacting out of fear or   
instinct. It was all so complex... 

Her hand glided down his face. "_I really live_." Until she had actually touched his face,   
her mind hadn't allowed her to really believe it, knowing all that it knew. But yet...she   
had felt him. He was physically there. She was physically there. It was the two of them,   
with the glow of the moon, and the lapping of water.

Her hand fell away, as she lost the strength to hold her arm up any longer. The boy   
looked down at her, his eyes wide. She tried to shift her eyes, just to look at him, but   
couldn't. Just moving her arm, in that one act to preserve her new life, had taken so   
much.

The boy sank, collapsing down and falling onto her body, sinking his face into her chest.   
Her previous persona would have exploded in anger over such a thing, but that person   
was dead. She felt his body against her. Her injuries protested, but her mind did not.   
She was just glad to feel a presence press against her, however it had to happen.

The boy began to cry, sobbing uncontrollably into her chest. She listened and felt him   
as she stared up at the moon. "_I live_." But who else did? It suddenly occurred to her   
that she hadn't heard or seen anyone else. In fact, from what she sensed and could see of   
the sky, things had changed dramatically. The Impact had changed everything... 

Was this the world that she had lived and died in? Was this reality? Those thoughts   
flashed through her mind briefly, but she quickly dismissed them. "_It doesn't matter_,"   
she thought. "_It's my reality, now. It's where I exist, from this point_."

The boy continued to cry, his whole body moving with each sob that flowed out of his   
very soul. She fought her paralysis, wanting to look at him, wanting to see him move and   
breathe. After a long moment, her right eye shifted down, getting a look not only at the   
boy, but at the landscape as well. 

The ground was white, and seemed to glow in a surreal way that seemed straight out of   
a dream. The water she heard lapping to her side could also be seen in the distance below   
her, colored blood red. "_It's always blood_." Everything in her life, but especially since   
joining up with the boy and the other girl, had revolved around blood, be it the smell or   
the shedding of it. Everything had been about killing, and about death. People had died.

She was guilty, in her own, dark way, of embracing death. It had become a part of her   
life, her very whole. In the end, her last words that echoed to the world were about her   
thirst for the blood of her enemies. No words of love. No words of regret. Just hateful,   
bitter words, that conveyed the only thing that she wanted, even as she knew that it was   
beyond her grasp, beyond her outstretched fingertips, even as death came for her on the   
wings of angels...

"_I'll kill you! I'll kill you! I'll kill you! I'll kill you! I'll kill you! I'll kill you! I'll kill   
you! I'll kill you! I'll kill you! I'll kill you! I'll kill you! I'll kill you! I'll kill you! I'll   
kill you! I'll kill you! I'll kill you! I'll kill you! I'll kill you! I'll kill you! I'll kill you!   
I'll kill you! I'll kill you! I'll kill you! I'll kill you! I'll kill you..._"  


She had died...

It was then that it really hit her, reality in its new, stark form, and it made her stomach   
turn. She saw nothing. She heard nothing. There was nothing. An entire world had passed   
on. And now, she and the boy were alone, with no one else, having moved to a   
point beyond where billions had not been allowed.

She had died as well, but for some reason that was beyond her to fully comprehend,   
she was now alive, but with the sickening memories of her own brutal death, and the   
knowledge that so many had perished and wouldn't be back, couldn't be back, like she   
was... 

"_I live_." Did she want to be alive, here, and why was it her? The first question she could   
answer easily, recalling her waking moments from her coma. "_I don't want to die_!" She   
had wanted to live then, before her death, and that feeling had not left her. 

She thought of the second question. What purpose could she serve in this empty,   
desolate existence? It didn't take long for it to come to her, standing out like the moon in   
the bleakness that was the sky. 

Her soul shook. For a young woman who had fought her own sexuality in her life, the   
truth of it all made her want to vomit that much more. She had recently just reached the   
point in her existence where she could bear children. Children...the base for a new   
population in this world. Her new reality.

A new world had dawned. A new, empty world, except for the two of them...   
With great effort, she concentrated, looking at the boy as she managed to whisper out   
the first words that came to her mind, passing them to her lips. It was what she felt, and   
she would have screamed it, if she had the energy:

"I feel sick."

This fan fiction piece Copyright 2002 Kevin Turnquist. I probably have no rights. 


End file.
